The Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film

The Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film is a fully international reference work on the history of the documentary film from the Lumi re brothers' Workers Leaving the Lumi re Factory (1885) to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 (2004). This Encyclopedia provides a resource that critically analyzes that history in all its aspects. Not only does this Encyclopedia examine individual films and the careers of individual film makers, it also provides overview articles of national and regional documentary film history. It explains concepts and themes in the study of documentary film, the techniques used in making films, and the institutions that support their production, appreciation, and preservation. Documentary film dates back to the last decades of the nineteenth century and has been practiced since then in every region of the world. Varying in style, technique, editing, story-telling, narration, and intent, it is a medium that records the cross-section of human experience, from monumental conflict to simple lives lived day to day. It documents the events, pressures, and institutions of modern society, records traditional cultural practices, cultural changes, and captures the natural and animal world in all their complexity. Diverse in form and subject matter, documentary film can have many missions as well, at times created to inform, intrigue, teach, enlighten, convert, outrage, accuse, and also to serve as perfect propaganda. With articles from scholars around the world, the Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film is a fully international reference work on the history of the documentary film from the Lumi re brothers' Workers Leaving the Lumi re Factory (1885) to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 (2004). All over the world documentary films have provided engaging, provocative, and skilled representations of life and this Encyclopedia provides a resource that critically analyzes that history in all its aspects. Not only does this Encyclopedia examine individual films and the careers of individual film makers, it also provides overview articles of national and regional documentary film history. It explains concepts and themes in the study of documentary film, the techniques used in making films, and the institutions that support their production, appreciation, and preservation. With over 200 film stills, this resource provides the decisive entry point into the history of an art form.